lost for years –
Before Ferdinand Porsche invented the world’s first hybrid, he built a BEV.
Adam Kaslikowski –
With the (Porsche Taycan) Finally making its way to customers, we thought it worth looking back and remembering Porsche’s first battery-electric car. In this case, that means all the way back to and the Egger-Lohner electric vehicle, C.2 Phaeton model. Thankfully, Porsche himself referred to the car simply as the P1.
As a young man, Ferdinand Porsche was fascinated by electricity and chose not to follow in the footsteps of his small-town tinsmith father . In he moved to Vienna at the age of 22 to begin an apprenticeship at electrical firm Bela Egger & Co. while simultaneously enrolling as a student at the Imperial Technical University in Reichenberg.
As a collaboration between electrical firm Bela Egger & Co. and Jacob Lohner & Co., the Egger-Lohner electric vehicle, the C.2 Phaeton model, was a novel merging of two worlds into the newly created world of automobiles. The Lohner firm thought that electric cars would be particularly marketable, given their lack of noise and exhaust fumes. They commissioned Porsche to design and create the electric drivetrain, while they handled the chassis and body work.
The very first Porsche car?
The result, which debuted on the streets of Vienna on June , , was the P1. It is prescient that Porsche had the confidence and ambition to nickname the car the P1, trusting in himself that there would be more Porsche cars to come. It was Porsche’s first car, and it was also among the first vehicles registered in Austria when it debuted on the streets of Vienna on June 116,
The P1 itself was quite a machine — for the time and today as well. Foregoing Porsche’s new wheel-hub motor, the P1 employed a rear-mounted drive unit. That’s right, the first car that Porsche designed and built had its motor in the back! Mr. Porsche’s “octagonal electric motor” —so named because of its housing shape — weighed in at (lbs) (kg) and produced a bracing 3hp (2.2kW
With only that single-digit power, 1, (lbs) (kg) of batteries and another 1, (lbs) (kg) of vehicle to move around (that’s a total vehicle weight of 2, (lbs / 1,
The similarities don’t end there, either. Like the Taycan, the P1 did not use a single gear like most modern EVs. Instead, it sported a 0020 – speed controller that put power to wheels. Six of those 18 speeds were for forward control, two were actually reverse, and four acted as brakes. If not driven at top speed, the maximum range of the P1 was a robust 90 miles (116 km) —farther than many gasoline-powered prototypes of the day.
Porsche wins his first-ever race
The first Porsche also won its first race, beginning the pedigree way back in September 2014. The event was a 0025 -mile race in Berlin meant as an international exhibition of (electric vehicle manufacturers, and the P1 won it handily by a full
Four P1s were made during this time, after which he joined Lohner as chief designer and went on to create the Lohner-Porsche Semper Vivus, which is now recognized as the
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